Civil War Environment

Similar to social history, Southern Historians have long focused on military history as another top method to study the South. The history of the Civil War has long interested Southerners across since it has impacted the South as it is known even today. However, similar to how Stewart brought social and environmental history together, military and environmental history can be used in unison to better tell the history of the war. In The Blue, The Gray, and the Green: Toward an Environmental History of the Civil War, a book of articles edited by Brian Drake, one sees how the environment affected the Civil War. In Megan Kate Nelson’s article, readers are getting an idea of what was happening out West during the war. Confederates were attempting to bring slavery out to California, but failed; their failure was mostly due to the desert being too hot and unbearable to cross, leading to a lot of their deaths. This is another instance of two historiographical methods coming together to give a larger history.
While it is easy to point the finger at Southern Historians for not embracing environmental history and let them take the blame, one must also look at the environmental historians and question their reluctance with approaching the South. Why is it that it took so long for environmental historians to study the South? For so long these …show more content…
Cowdrey attempts to be the first to really outline what makes the South different from the rest of the nation. Through his definition, Cowdrey lands on the theme of “climate” being the determining factor that defines the South. Here, climate not only discusses the obvious environmental features of the region, but also the cultural features. While this definition of the South it not as scientifically sound as one may hope for, Cowdrey did lay the foundation for other historians to use climate in order to help with their own future definitions of the